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Elon Musk launches attack on Fortnite players and jokes that game will be shut down

Elon Musk is engaged in a bizarre fight with Fortnite fans after he appeared to call them "virgins".

The SpaceX and Tesla boss – who has been repeatedly criticised over his tweets – posted a picture of a fake news article that seemed to suggest fans of the video game are "virgins".

"Elon Musk buys Fortnite and deletes it," the hoax news story, shared on Mr Musk's Twitter, read. It claimed that the billionaire had said he had to remove the game to protect players from "eternal virginity".

He shared the bizarre post with a message reading: "Had to been done ur welcome".

Developers Epic responded to the posts joking about the fact that Mr Musk had said it would take 10 years to build a Mars base. "A whole decade, @elonmusk? Just build, LOL!" the game's official account posted.

Mr Musk wrote a response that post in which he said only that "reality is hard".

The original tweet has now been retweeted more than 360,000 times and has gained 17,000 replies. Many of the comments came from either Fortnite or Tesla fans, who offered more or less humorous attacks on the pair.

The article in Mr Musk's tweet appears to be a reference to a broader pattern on the internet, where fake rumours about Fortnite abound. Repeatedly, false stories suggest that the company will be shutting down its free battle royale mode, and the post might be a reference to that rumour.